Adrienne
MayorThe Poison King: The Life
and Legend of MithradatesPrinceton University Press

Video from the 2009 National
Book Awards Finalist Reading

Photo credit: Josiah
Ober

CITATION

With narrative sweep and riveting
detail, Adrienne Mayor brings Mithradates to life. Her
powerful recreation of an ancient clash of civilizations
is interwoven with striking parallels to current events
in the Middle East. She brings history, geography, mythology,
art, psychology, and science to bear in a lively, accessible
mix. The Poison King brilliantly demonstrates
how learned scholarship can still reach and move a general
audience.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Claiming Alexander the Great
and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited
a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age 14 after his mother
poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned
in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence
and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers
and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned
a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring
80,000 Roman citizens in 88 BC, he dragged Rome into
a long round of wars. His uncanny ability to elude capture
and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the
Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to
foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals. The
Poison King is a gripping account of one of Rome’s
most relentless but least understood foes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adrienne Mayor is the author
of Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion
Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient
World and The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology
in Greek and Roman Times. She is a visiting scholar
in classics and history of science at Stanford University.

In spring of 88 BC, in dozens
of cities across Anatolia (Asia Minor, modern Turkey),
sworn enemies of Rome joined a secret plot. On an
appointed day in one month’s time, they vowed
to kill every Roman man, woman, and child in their
territories.

The conspiracy was masterminded
by King Mithradates the Great, who communicated secretly
with numerous local leaders in Rome’s new Province
of Asia. (“Asia” at this time referred
to lands from the eastern Aegean to India; Rome’s
Province of Asia encompassed western Turkey.) How
Mithradates kept the plot secret remains one of the
great intelligence mysteries of antiquity. The conspirators
promised to round up and slay all the Romans and Italians
living in their towns, including women and children
and slaves of Italian descent. They agreed to confiscate
the Romans’ property and throw the bodies out
to the dogs and crows. Anyone who tried to warn or
protect Romans or bury their bodies was to be harshly
punished. Slaves who spoke languages other than Latin
would be spared, and those who joined in the killing
of their masters would be rewarded. People who murdered
Roman moneylenders would have their debts canceled.
Bounties were offered to informers and killers of
Romans in hiding.

The deadly plot worked perfectly.
According to several ancient historians, at least
80,000—perhaps as many as 150,000—Roman
and Italian residents of Anatolia and Aegean islands
were massacred on that day. The figures are shocking—perhaps
exaggerated—but not unrealistic. Exact population
figures for the first century BC are not known. But
great numbers of Italian merchants and new Roman citizens
had swarmed to recently conquered lands as Rome expanded
its empire in the late Republic […] Ancient
statistics often represent guesswork or exaggeration.
Even if the lower death toll of 80,000 was inflated,
as some scholars believe, and if we reduce the count
of the dead by half, the slaughter of unsuspecting
innocents was staggering. The extent of the massacre
is not in doubt: modern historians agree with the
ancient sources that virtually all Roman and Italian
residents of Provincia Asia were wiped out.